England close in on Edgbaston mauling

Australia will likely have plenty of time to ponder precisely how their Ashes campaign has lurched so quickly off the rails, and plot a means to somehow get it back on track at Trent Bridge in a week.

Australia's seven wickets to fall (Aus only)

The best part of three days they had not budgeted on to try and bolster a middle-order batting card that has been exposed as inadequate against the sort of bowling and type of conditions that will be awaiting in Nottingham.

The best part of three days to tutor a bowling attack that looked so menacing on a flat pitch at Lord’s a fortnight earlier but seemingly left that expertise somewhere on the M1 on the trip that brought them via Derby to Birmingham, and a thud back to earth.

Image Id: ~/media/FAAEEBC76047403E8552A3011376C382

Clarke heads back to the pavilion // Getty Images

The best part of three days to salve the physical effects of what looms as one of the most fleeting Ashes Test of recent and not-so-recent times, and manage the shellshock and fall-out from a comprehensive all-round beating England have delivered over the past two days.

It is salient practice to preface such bold predictions with caveats such “barring a miracle …” or “unless sub-standard service is not resumed …”

But such has been England’s crushing, inescapable dominance of the third Test at Edgbaston that will end on day three that anything other than a huge win to the home team would be as unfair as it is improbable.

Image Id: ~/media/91EE7B45C5044739A69E20D1117CC935

England fans applaud their team's stunning effort // Getty Images

Australia resume tomorrow 23 runs in surplus, with only their bowlers left to bat and with three days of unseasonably fine Midlands summer weather offering them no hope of escaping with a  draw.

David Warner (77), the only top-order player to make it to double figures amid another spectacular batting implosion, said at day’s end a target for 150 for England could be defendable even though the pitch remains a very fair batting surface.

Watch: Warner's lone hand (Aus only)

But apart from the first 10 minutes of play today in which a pair of England wickets fell, and a final extra hour when – against the tide of the past two days – only a single Australian one did likewise, England have been a revelation after getting thumped by 405 runs at Lord’s.

The last-minute of reborn fast bowler Steve Finn has proved perhaps the selection master stroke of the series, with the 25-year-old tearing the heart out and the belief from Australia’s batters for the second time in barely 24 hours to claim 5-45 from 13 hypnotic overs.

Image Id: ~/media/A0E2D1CA472348F2ACB93D42FB9258EF

Finn terrorised the Australians // Getty Images

More than those raw figures, it was the manner in which he destroyed a timid, traumatised opposition that told the bigger story with the speed, bounce and hostility that was earmarked as Australia’s trumps in this series being turned against the tourists.

And they have rarely looked so uncomfortable or unprepared.

Image Id: ~/media/3A04236E928F48BCA244281A6866EAED

Mitchell Marsh is castled // Getty Images

Australia’s best hopes of the sort of reversal that has characterised the first three Tests of this roller-coaster series might be the apparent side injury suffered by England seamer James Anderson this evening, which already has him in doubt for the fourth Test at Trent Bridge.

Quick Single: Anderson leaves field with side issue

A venue where he has proved a class apart throughout most of his record-setting career.

It was a rare moment of concern for an England team as cock-a-hoop as the roaring terraces that have created such a cauldron-like environment in Birmingham to date.

After an early stumble, England’s lower order gave lie to the notion this Edgbaston is unplayable by doubling their score in the back half of their first innings.

Image Id: ~/media/3625A56670024A9FA81AE9E7F4C011F4

Moeen made a crucial 59 // Getty Images

They then showed the science of bowling to measure on a seaming is not as straightforward as lay folk might suspect by landing the ball repeatedly where Australia’s batsmen least wanted it.

And the tourists crashed to six wickets down before they had even looked like making England bat a second time.

Watch: All 10 England wickets (Aus only)

That will happen on Friday, but given the paucity of the target they will be set it’s unlikely to be for long.

It’s difficult to understate the severity of Australia’s capitulation against an opponent that has come off the ropes and landed more blows more effectively than anyone since Ali (Muhammad, not Moeen) in Zaire.

It stretches credulity even further when memories are cast back to sunny Lord’s of 12 days earlier when Michael Clarke’s team had not simply flattened England, but ground them so deeply into the revered turf they were believed to be mortally wounded.

Image Id: ~/media/EA5BB5C5DF564CB7ADB4662DBA36745A

David Warner cuts a lonely figure // Getty Images

So gargantuan and unforeseen have been the swings in performance from one Test to the next in this series, if they were being fought out between most other Test teams in a myriad of other cricket nations they would be playing the next one within a perimeter of crime scene tape.

Here’s a bit of context that was bandied around when defeat before stumps today as a real scenario that Australia faced.

Australia has not lost a Test match inside two days since 1890 when their then colonial masters gave them a right thrashing at The Oval.

Image Id: ~/media/43C74E44284A4862B51D265E5CD89B71

Smith miscues his pull shot // Getty Images

As England had done to them on the preceding tour two years prior, at that same venue where this series will terminate in 25 days.

That’s employing the loopy likelihood that a Test in this series drags itself into the fifth day.

And for that to happen, Australia will need to dig far deeper into their travel bag of resolve and resources than they did with astounding success after Cardiff.

Not that one of the bleakest days of Australian Test cricket of late dawned as such.

It was only an over old when Mitchell Johnson, pilloried by the parochially vocal Edgbaston crowd on day one, had them applauding in his honour when he sent through a searing bouncer that Jonny Bairstow had to leap vertically from his crease in order to have it brush his glove.

Image Id: ~/media/C5343D101640473588D5EF5B9D860CED

Johnson began the day brightly // Getty Images

Johnson’s 300th Test wicket, that granted him life membership to an exclusive of left-arm Test quicks to have reached that benchmark – Wasim Akram (414), Chaminda Vaas (355) and Zaheer Khan (311) – was followed by 301 a couple of balls later when he pulled the same trick on Ben Stokes.

Quick Single: Johnson reaches 300 Test wickets

Less than 10 minutes into the second day, the game was on a knife edge with the top half of England’s batting removed and a lead of just six runs.

But rather than channel the energy and aggression that their front man had gifted them, Australia’s other bowlers went back to the bad old ways of their day one effort.

In trying to find swing in conditions that demonstrably favoured movement off the seam – or, failing that as Johnson showed, at least exhibited bounce at pace – Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and to a lesser extent Mitchell Marsh served up an unhealthily steady diet of four balls.

Image Id: ~/media/EE170AABFE8540058C1637E3F6905CA1

Broad contributed well with the bat // Getty Images

Into which Moeen Ali (whose inability to handle short bowling had been an object of mockery at Lord’s)  and Stuart Broad (who has conceded his is even less credible) tucked heartily in an eighth-wicket stand that yielded 87 runs in less than 10 overs.

A match they had hauled back to within touching distance was once more accelerating away into the distance.

Indeed, that hour of waywardness in which Ali flashed and occasionally flourished his way to 59 in between having no clue against an impeccable spell of his own off-spin craft delivered by Nathan Lyon, might well have been the one in which the third Test was lost.

Watch: Moeen Ali's important innings

If it wasn’t followed by another batting effort so abject it’s difficult to imagine it won’t be retrospectively fingered as the afternoon when the Ashes quite possibly changed hands.

The clatter of wickets on day one was attributed as much to the English grass on a very English wicket and some English cloud cover meaning the England-made Dukes ball behaved in a manner more foreign to the Australians than England’s three seam bowlers.

All of whom are known from Ashes campaign past.

But 45 minutes after lunch under bright sunshine, on a pitch that England’s number eight and nine had swung the bat with impunity and dwindling risk, Australia embarked on an innings that will haunt them in Ashes lowlights reels and gloating glory packages for decades to come.

Image Id: ~/media/FDB45838779C446AA603D729EBC2B32E

Broad removes Rogers again // Getty Images

Chris Rogers, the only batsman in Australia’s disastrous first dig to come to grips with conditions so hostile and alien as to unpick the very fabric of the other professional batters’ techniques, was unable to negotiate one delivery from Broad in the second.

The left-hander can plead mitigating circumstances in that the ball – from around the wicket that angled past his bat but straightened enough to hit the off bail – was simply good enough to beat a player in such good nick.

It also means Rogers has lost his wicket to the past two balls he has received from the England quick, thereby raising the prospect of a rare personal hat-trick from Broad come next week’s fourth Test on his home ground, given that Rogers is one of the few Australians guaranteed a place in their next XI.

Image Id: ~/media/B925E8CADE3D4D89BA3BC11FC81A4243

Finn pleads for another // Getty Images 

Steve Smith is another, though his tenure at the top of the Test world’s batting rankings looks as wobbly as the batting on the rungs immediately beneath him on Australia’s team sheet after his dismissal today.

The premeditated nature of his attempt to tug the first ball of Finn’s second spell – who was switched to the opposite end after he was belted for 14 runs in the one over of his first – over mid-wicket was unbecoming even for a man of such unorthodox methods.

More culpably, it opened the door to an Australia middle-order whose struggle is best illustrated by Clarke.

Image Id: ~/media/5010BA7CF7D440A8954AC025133BFC20

Clarke continued his lean run // Getty Images

The Australia captain’s words detail a batsman feeling good about his game, trustful of his tried and true preparation and track record and burning with a hunger to continue as one of the dominant Test batsmen of the past decade.

But his movements, his numbers and – perhaps most tellingly – the air of apprehension among his many supporters and that of expectation within his rivals when he is at the crease speak a vastly different tale.

It would be unthinkable that Clarke would be replaced in the team during this series, partly because there is but one auxiliary batsman in the sort of form needed at such a juncture (Shaun Marsh) and he will be needed to fill Adam Voges’s spot.

Image Id: ~/media/7F91243B0AE148249F230F029F9A2343

Voges was out first ball // Getty Images

Voges, like Rogers, was inked in for this tour because of his vast and bountiful experience in England  yet his contribution in this Test played in the most traditional conditions encountered to date was essentially three catches, two of which he clutched to his clothing.

For the second time in as many days he fell to a catch behind the wicket when wafting outside the off stump, today’s effort coming the ball after Clarke was squared up by Finn and snared by a clever diving catch low at fourth slip.

Image Id: ~/media/487A07B00B2D47239FC052C3A1AA9609

Lyth hangs onto Clarke // Getty Images

England were not only hunting with energy and purpose, they were in no mood to let their quarry off the hook as Mitchell Marsh found when he endured a forgettable half hour that could have ended with a narrow lbw review just a couple of deliveries  before he failed to get even pad on one.

Then, when the girth of the sides on Warner’s ‘kaboom’ bat saw his attempted leg side flick to Anderson soar from a leading edge into the stratosphere rather than plop harmlessly on the wicket block as happened in years gone by, plans for the coming days were hastily rewritten.

Image Id: ~/media/1943D1D904B44A2D9F1FCD7D1A4ADF83

Warner's resistance ends // Getty Images

The fact that Smith, Warner and Johnson all fell to similar strokes – cross bat shots that the bat was through before the ball arrived – coupled with the spin and bounce Lyon extracted this morning suggested the two-paced pitch might have provided a stern challenge for the team batting last.

Provided they were chasing more than 23.

And on day five rather than day three.

Australia: David Warner, Chris Rogers, Steve Smith, Michael Clarke (c), Adam Voges, Mitchell Marsh, Peter Nevill, Mitchell Johnson, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Nathan Lyon.

England: Alastair Cook (c), Adam Lyth, Ian Bell, Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes, Jos Buttler, Moeen Ali, Stuart Broad, Steve Finn, James Anderson.

Click above to learn more about how to stream the Ashes and more cricket